Category Archives: civic infrastructure

On Evaluation and Legitimacy in D&D

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Our partners at the Kettering Foundation recently published an insightful interview with Prof. Katie Knobloch of the Center for Public Deliberation – an NCDD organizational member – that we wanted to share here. There’s a lot to learn from Katie’s reflection on the challenges of evaluating and legitimizing D&D work, so we encourage you to read the interview below or find the original piece here.

Does Our Work Really Matter? Deliberative Practitioners Reflect on the Impact of Their Work

kfAs attention to public deliberation has increased, one core interest of researchers has been evaluating the impact of deliberative processes. Researchers, practitioners, elected officials, and participants themselves want to know if what they’re doing matters. Does public deliberation impact policy? Does it change our attitude toward issues? Does it adhere to democratic ideals?

Professor Katherine R. Knobloch has been intimately involved in evaluation work, refining our understanding of these questions. Former research assistant Jack Becker sat down with her to talk about her work around evaluation, as well as her work with the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review.

Katherine R. Knobloch is an assistant professor and the associate director of the Center for Public Deliberation in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. Her research and teaching focus on political communication and civic engagement, specifically exploring how deliberative public processes can create a more informed and engaged citizenry. For this work, she has received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study the expansion of a new governing institution, the Citizens’ Initiative Review. Her work has appeared in The Journal of Applied Communication Research, Politics, and the International Journal of Communication.

Jack Becker: Your work explores the development, evaluation, and impact of deliberative public processes. How do you compartmentalize each of these in your research?

Katherine R. Knobloch: The central element of interest is figuring out how to implement deliberative practices in ways that matter. To look at the development of public deliberation, I talk with people about what goes into running organizations, how they work with public officials to implement their processes, and how they got involved in public deliberation. I do a lot of fieldwork and observations to examine this.

For evaluation, I have worked alongside a number of scholars to develop a coding scheme that allows us to break the deliberative process out into segments. We then use that scheme to judge the deliberations against goals that practitioners identified and goals and definitions that we as researchers have developed to analyze if processes are fulfilling democratic and deliberative standards.

For example, we have used an updated definition from John Gastil’s Political Communication and Deliberation (2008), that deliberation is an analytic information gathering process, a democratic discussion process, and a decision-making process. I will also spend time observing participants and getting feedback from them directly, asking, for example, did they reach their goals? Did they uphold deliberative criteria? I will also do a pre- and post-survey of participants to examine a variety of factors, such as attitudinal changes.

To look at impact, with the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) process, for example, we are looking at whether the process has an impact in how voters make their decisions. Do people read the CIR statement? Do they find the information valuable?

You have a chapter in Democracy in Motion: Evaluating the Practice and Impact of Deliberative Civic Engagement (2012) in which you and your coauthors lay out criteria for evaluating deliberative public processes. What is it we learn from evaluating deliberation, and what are our challenges?

I think we’re looking to refine our methods. I’m concerned that we do evaluation in an inefficient way. Much of my own work in evaluating deliberation relies on grants, and that’s not sustainable, particularly for small organizations that lack the capacity to get large grants and do the evaluative work. So we need to figure out what survey methods are best and how they can be refined to make it easier for practitioners to regularly evaluate their work.

For the CIR, we wanted to start a coding scheme that would be applicable across deliberative events. Deliberative processes are dynamic, and that’s another challenge to the work of evaluation. During deliberative processes, the agenda may change in real time, and in the past, we’ve changed coding schemes, but now we’re trying to use the same coding scheme and develop one that will work in other deliberative processes. The goal of evaluation is to be able to look back and say what the most valuable results from a process are.

Are we seeing more practitioners evaluate their own work?

I think that’s been a trend in recent years. More people want to know if their work is doing what they say it’s doing. Also, they want to know if it is effective in impacting communities, organizations, and people.

I attended a session at the National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation this year that was focused on practitioners and academics getting on the same page with evaluation. One of the challenges is that everyone is working off of different frameworks. Josh Lerner with Participatory Budgeting (PB) pointed out at the conference how many different teams are evaluating PB processes. So they are trying to create at least a funnel point to gather this info and synthesize this.

I’ve been talking about civic infrastructure with people for the past year. How do innovations such as the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) fit into ideas of civic infrastructure?

One of the most important breakthroughs for the CIR in Oregon is that it is a legitimate and formal part of the governing process. I think effective public engagement matters. It’s important for participants to come away from deliberative processes feeling like their participation was purposeful and that it could have a real impact on public decision making. I think that’s the legitimizing part of the CIR. It legitimizes deliberation as part of governance. Ideally, we would like to see more processes like these become embedded in government as ways to improve the quality of our civic infrastructure.

Organizations, practitioners, and theorizers are taking this process seriously. As a field, deliberation faces the challenge of implementing decisions that publics make at deliberative events. So people make decisions through deliberative processes, but then decision makers decide whether to use it. So the CIR specifically addresses that problem, in that recommendations go right to voters in the voters guide for their consideration. The CIR finds a way to make those decisions matter at the policymaking level.

Participatory Budgeting is a wonderful example of making things matter for people as well. City councils and city governments are handing over portions of their budget to citizen decision making, showing that citizens have the capacity to make these decisions.

So part of the success I hear there is that they are creating connections to the decision-making process by working with decision makers. Are elected and appointed officials into this?

I think there are more city officials who are into deliberation. It may be wishful thinking, but I see city officials taking citizen voice more seriously. I think they want to understand what citizens want and why. Even President Obama making the call for a discussion on mental health is a good example. And models like the Colorado State University Center for Public Deliberation are great examples of linking deliberative practice more directly with city officials and providing recommendations to city councils in ways that are impactful.

Hawaii state senator Les Ihara Jr. stressed to me in a recent interview the importance of meeting elected officials where they are. Does this resonate as a productive approach to growing deliberative practice?

Legislators are often wary of the initiative process since the policy or legislation is created without a connection to the resources allocation process. So it creates a misalignment in the policymaking process. Legislators are open to how to improve the initiative process. And so in Oregon, officials were interested in how to improve that process and saw that the CIR could potentially bring more alignment to the initiative process.

So in developing the Citizens’ Initiative Review, to what extent was the process driven by government officials in demanding these changes?

It was really driven by the founders of the CIR who were not a part of government. When they first proposed the CIR, they had a conversation with the Oregon Secretary of State who asked them to run a pilot. The founders of the process drove it. But they worked closely alongside legislators and public officials to identify what they thought would be useful to improve the process and to make sure it met the needs for Oregon as a whole. And the legislators of Oregon asked for a thorough evaluation of the process during the pilot, exploratory phase. So it really comes back to the importance of evaluation in growing deliberative practice.

The original version of this Kettering Foundation interview can be found at http://kettering.org/kfnews/does-our-work-matter.

Aligning Engagement with Function Over Form

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We recently read a commentary by the Davenport Institute  – an NCDD organizational member – on their Gov 2.0 Watch blog remarking on an insightful article we think NCDD members would appreciate. The article has key insights about the importance of aligning engagement with the functions of government rather than its ever-shifting administrative structure, and how online engagement can help. We encourage you to read more below or find the original post here.

DavenportInst-logoContinuity in the Face of Change

One of the most common criticisms of government – especially in the age of technology – is a perceived resistance to change.  But change does bring disruption. As governments seek to become more innovative, as fiscal realities demand continue to require organizational restructuring, and as technological advances require flexibility with platforms and design, this can have real impact on a government’s community engagement.

Recently the Australian public sector blog The Mandarin took a look at how governments can keep well organized and clear channels of communication open in the face of such disruptions. The article notes:

Traditional face-to-face engagement processes are largely project based and the impact on the community is limited to some bewilderment at the new logos, and muttering about the cost. There may also be a knock on impact if there are major staff changes, if there is a hiatus in progress, or if the new department has changed priorities.

But the article goes on to describe how changing the focus and organization – not of the government but of the engagement – can lead to stronger, more sustainable relationships between governments and residents even in the face of change.  The solution focuses mainly on online strategies, but the general organization strategies could also apply in face-to-face engagement efforts, especially as those become institutionalized as part of a new culture:

Let’s face it, the community doesn’t actually care, by and large, which department they are talking to. It’s the issue that matters, so don’t align engagement efforts with administrative structures. Instead, align your engagement, and specifically online engagement efforts, with functions that you know will continue to exist regardless of the brand applied to them or the structure of their delivery in future governments.

If you are, for example, a state government department with responsibility for the environment, heritage, and primary industries, then establish an online engagement portal for each of these functions. Perhaps break them down further.

You can read more here.

How Not to Use the IAP2 Spectrum in Engagement

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We recently saw great piece on common misunderstandings and misapplications of the IAP2 Spectrum – a widely used tool in our field created by the good people with the International Association of Public Participation – shared on our NCDD discussion list, and we found it valuable enough to share here. The reflections come from Max Hardy of Max Hardy Consulting, an NCDD organizational member, and we encourage you to read his piece below or to find the original on his blog by clicking here.

Hardy logoReflections on the IAP2 Spectrum

I remember well how thrilled I was to come across a thoughtful framework for community engagement, the IAP2 Spectrum, in the late 1990s. Developed by some highly skilled and generous practitioners in North America, it has since become the most recognizable brand and image related to the field of community engagement. The IAP2 Spectrum has become synonymous with the association itself and is now proudly referred to policy statements and guidelines for hundreds of organisations, especially in Australia and New Zealand. Sadly the IAP2 Core Values have not had similar attention or profile, but that is a blog for another time.

During my time with Twyfords we probably explained the IAP2 Spectrum (and ran exercises drawing upon it) to thousands of students, practitioners, elected representatives, professionals in a multitude of sectors. Unfortunately, it has in many instances been misused, abused or at least misunderstood. Even where it is understood and applied, it has not always been helpful or offered the intended clarity. So here I want to talk about what the Spectrum is about, what it is meant to do, how it has been misinterpreted, and also what I consider to be some limitations of the framework. (I need to stress that I am not pretending to offer the definitive view of these matters; our application and understanding of the Spectrum continues to evolve).

What is it?

It is a framework that explains the different levels of engagement that organisations can engage their stakeholders/communities. The further to the right on the Spectrum, the greater the influence the community has to influence decision-making. At each level a different promise to the community applies – a promise that decision-makers can be held accountable to. Each level requires a different type of interaction.

The Inform level simply offers to provide information throughout a process about work being undertaken by an internal or expert team leading up to a decision being made. The promise is simply keeping people informed – some would say it is about helping people to understand. No input or feedback is sought from the community of interest.

The Consult level is about putting forward options or a proposal for which feedback is sought. The promise is to listen to the community of interest’s feedback, to carefully consider, then make decisions and finally explain how this feedback has been taken into account.

The Involve level invites input and ideas from the community to help develop options/potential solutions. The community participates earlier in the process than for the consult level. The community is part of developing solutions, not merely commenting about plans or solutions being proposed by an organisation. Ultimately the organisation will still make decisions, but they promise that the decisions will be informed by ideas and input.

The Collaborate level is a significant jump. It’s about partnering and sharing power – to the maximum extent possible (a phrase that has been used, confused and misused). It takes more time and effort. A range of stakeholders/community members work together with the sponsoring organisation to define the scope of the decision to be made, to develop options, to assess those options against agreed criteria in an attempt to arrive at consensus. Although more time consuming and expensive it is the shortest route to an implementable solution for highly complex/controversial decisions.

The Empower level is essentially delegated decision-making. It is where an organisation promises to do whatever the ‘community of interest’ decides.

What I like about the Spectrum

Although drawing upon much earlier work of Sherry Arnstein (Arnstein’s Ladder) it is the most helpful framework around – still – for showing that engagement can happen at different levels, requiring different types of interaction. The ‘Promise to the Public’ layer is quite simply written and helps everyone to check with decision-makers and project leaders whether this is the promise they are really making, when throwing around words such as consult, involve, collaborate and empower. The descriptions of the levels help to make more visible the kind of process that is being pursued and promised.

I also like the layout. It is not meant to be a hierarchy, it is a continuum, and this is presented quite helpfully. The layout and neatness of it has helped it to become the major reference point for a decade.

Some common misunderstandings of the Spectrum

  1. You start at the left and go right. Some have misunderstood the framework completely, thinking that you start off Informing, then you Consult, then you Involve etc. It’s a framework and a not a process guide.
  2. At the Inform level a decision has already been made (like the DAD approach; Decide Announce and Defend). It may seem like a subtle difference but this is not the case. At the Inform level the public is kept informed about progress being made by an internal working group, until a decision is made. No input or feedback is sought – people are just progressively informed about what is going on.
  3. Once a level is selected, that is what you have to do throughout. This is not necessarily the case. IAP2 does not actually stipulate this, but those trained in the IAP2 Certificate are told that it is very important to work out the highest level on the Spectrum you will go for any given process. All the levels to the left of that level also apply.
  4. The further to the right on the Spectrum, the better it is. This was never the intention and it is why the Spectrum runs left to right – so that it does not appear to be a hierarchy like Arnstein’s Ladder. IAP2 has attempted to convey through the training, that it depends. It is about finding the most appropriate level. Trying to Collaborate on something fairly straightforward, where there is little passion or complexity, would be a waste of time. Doing a simple Consult level process for something highly complex will probably result in having to start all over again, after having done some damage.
  5. It is up to the organisation to decide what level, and be clear about it, then everything should run smoothly. In my experience this is nonsense. The level often needs to be negotiated, and communities have shown that they can challenge the level of engagement, especially when particular stakeholder groups have been overlooked in the process.

Some things I have learned from practice

Along with a number of other practitioners, I have found that the Spectrum is a much more flexible framework perhaps than it was first envisaged. For any given process it is common to move to a different level of on the Spectrum on a number of occasions.

For instance, if a Consult level process is not going well (i.e., a community group is very unhappy with the options being presented, and instead want to be involved in developing options), it is possible that the process will need to go as high as Collaborate for a time until trust is rebuilt. If sufficient trust is built an organisation may be finally told to just get on with it, and move as far back as Inform. Yes – it does happen!

Flexibility also applies to working with different groups at different levels at the same time. Collaborating with more than 15 people is very challenging. Generally when working at Collaborate there will be other groups and individuals with whom an organisation will need to actively be informing, consulting and involving. Keeping the broader community engaged is critical. Developing trust between the broader community and those who are at the table collaborating is a real challenge, but one that must be attended to.

Another learning, and this emerged from a great sessions facilitated by Professor Bojinka Bishop in Salt Lake City back in 2002 (I think), is that Collaborate is often a stronger level of engagement than Empower. The reason for this is that at Collaborate, the sponsoring organisation(s) are there working through an issue, or decision, or plan, with a diverse range of stakeholders. They are all in it together, whereas as Empower, the organisation(s) delegate decisions to external stakeholders. Often this means that less complex issues are delegated, and that the organisation becomes more removed from the process. Paradoxically, collaboration can be more empowering than the empower level because of the investment in building longer term working relationships and the level of importance given to the process. There have been exceptions to this – but that is a blog for another time.

Some limitations of the IAP2 Spectrum

Again, these are my personal views, but they are based on plenty of experience. I believe we expect way too much of the Spectrum if we believe it will safeguard an engagement process, and provide clarity for all. It is useful – but on its own not sufficient.

There are some limitations to its usefulness (as with any framework) and assumptions made that may not be helpful. Here are some:

  • The IAP2 Spectrum is written as if there is only one sponsoring organisation involved. Even if you look at the Collaborate level it is assumed that collaboration will influence the decision to the maximum extent possible. If multiple organisations co-sponsor the process, then collaboration is not an option – it is fundamental. Without thorough collaboration a decision will not be made, and partnering will break down.
  • Secondly, the IAP2 Spectrum is written in a way (and this is perpetuated by the Certificate Training) that the organisation can do its own research and risk analysis and determine, by itself, the most appropriate level on the Spectrum. In my experience, this is often negotiated, and the community wants to be part of that conversation – especially for projects that are controversial and complex.
  • Thirdly, the Spectrum assumes that the organisation is the entity initiating the process. This is not always the case – engagement can be initiated by the community, or a particular community group, and the Spectrum, and supporting information, does not really make provision for this.
  • Lastly, it assumes that the process is essentially about influencing a decision. Once a decision is made, then what? In my experience, the process itself is incredibly important as to what happens after decisions or plans have been determined. If ongoing relationships are important to implementation then that needs to be considered in determining the level of the Spectrum. Anything less than Involve is unlikely to help build the system’s capacity to make those decisions sustainable.

In conclusion

Well there it is. Turned out to be much longer than I thought. If you got to the end, well done. So what are your thoughts, experiences, and observations? Oh, and if ever you say to me that your organisation uses the IAP2 Spectrum as its policy framework or methodology, chances are I will ask you to consider the above. For me, clearly, the IAP2 Spectrum in a policy or strategy document will not necessarily give me confidence that it is being used well or consistently. But it can be useful, and those who generated it have given us something worthwhile.

You can find the original version of this piece by visiting www.maxhardy.com.au/reflections-on-the-iap2-spectrum.

Register for the Citizen University 2015 Conference

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We want to encourage our members to attend the 2015 Citizen University annual conference this March 20th-21st in Seattle, Washington if you can. Citizen University conferences are impressive gatherings that do a lot to help galvanize leaders from many different sectors, and we know NCDD members will be able to both contribute and gain a lot by attending.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Citizen Power,” and here’s a bit of how the organizers describe it:

The Citizen University annual National Conference is like no other civic gathering in America. Hundreds of changemakers, activists, and catalysts show up to learn about power, build their networks, and recharge their sense of purpose. They come from across the country, the political spectrum, and a wide range of domains — from immigrant rights to national service, voting reform to veteran re-integration, civic education to Hollywood and tech. They are you.

Our theme this year is Citizen Power, particularly in the shadow of Ferguson and Staten Island, and the 50th anniversary of so much of the Civil Rights Movement. This is a time when citizens are solving problems in new ways, bypassing broken institutions, stale ideologies, and polarized politics. We are part of a movement to rekindle citizenship in America. We hope you’ll join us!

Regular registration for this year’s conference is $200, but you can still take advantage of the $175 early bird rate or even cheaper rates if you are a student, veteran, senior, or volunteer. The early bird registration cut off is February 28th, so make sure to register ASAP.

The conference has an impressive lineup of presenters and speakers and will be attended by lots of movers and shakers, including our own executive directory Sandy Heierbacher. If you’re planning to attend this year, make sure to send her a message at sandy@ncdd.org letting her know you’re interested in meeting up with her and other NCDD members who will be in attendance.

For more information on Citizen University, visit www.citizenuniversity.us/conference. We hope to see some of you there!

CM & Orton Launch Heart & Soul Talks and Trainings

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We are excited to announce that our friends at CommunityMatters – a partnership in which NCDD is a core member – are introducing a new series of online events on the Orton Family Foundation‘s Heart & Soul Planning process, which is also the basis of Orton’s new Heart & Soul Field Guide.

CM_logo-200pxThe series begins this Thursday, February 12th at 4pm Eastern with a “Heart & Soul Talk” conference call. The talk, titled “Use Community Network Analysis to Improve Participation and Results,” promises to be a great opportunity to learn about a useful tool that can strengthen the work that many of our NCDD members do.

The call will feature the insights of NCDD member Alece Montez-Greigo along with Alexis Halbert and Gabrielle Ratté Smith of the Orton Family Foundation. Here’s how the folks at CM describe the event:

Achieving community-wide participation is an admirable but often lofty goal. Identifying the multiple layers of community can be the difference between success or failure of a project. Orton’s Community Network Analysis (CNA) brings fresh new voices and solutions to the table and is a powerful way to understand who lives, works, and plays in your town and how best to reach them.

Alece Montez-Greigo, Orton’s director of programs, explains the tool. Community Heart & Soul project coordinators Alexis Halbert of Paonia, Colorado, and Gabrielle Ratté Smith, senior associate for strategic partnerships at Orton and of Essex, Vermont, join her to share their on-the-ground experience with CNA.

We encourage you to learn more about the Heart & Soul Field Guide from one of our recent entries in the NCDD Resource Center and to register for this first Heart & Soul Talk today. We hope hear you on the call next week!

Text, Talk, Act Conversations Return this April & May

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We are happy to announce that Text, Talk, Act – the youth mental health conversation initiative launched in 2013 by NCDD-supported Creating Community Solutions – is returning with two nationwide events this spring! As most of you know, TTA has been supported by NCDD since early on, and it has already shown a lot of encouraging results in past iterations.

This next round of conversations has two different dates and promises to be the best one yet! The first date is Tuesday, April 14th in partnership with Active Mind’s Stress Less Week. The second one, Thursday, May 7th, coincides with SAMSHA’s National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day.

We strongly encourage our NCDD members to consider signing up to organize a Text, Talk, Act event in your communities. We know these events are helping make a difference in the lives of young people across the country, and we want to support this innovative way to engage young people in dialogue!

We are also excited to announce that groups that participate in this spring’s TTA conversations are eligible to win the contest for one of five $1,000 prizes for their school or organization! For those groups that can’t participate on either of these days, Text, Talk, Act will be open during all of April and May! Anyone, at any time, from anywhere, can participate in Text, Talk, Act by texting START to 89800 (or 778-588-1995 for people in Canada or those who may have blocks in place for the shorter number).

You can get involved today by registering to host an event here, and don’t forget to check out the toolkit CCS created to support event organizers.

Want to know more about Text, Talk, Act? You can learn more in the video below or by visiting www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/texttalkact.

Join Everyday Democracy’s Orientation Webinar on Feb. 12

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If you’re not already familiar with the work of Everyday Democracy, one of our founding NCDD organizational members, we highly encourage you to register for their upcoming orientation webinar on Thursday, February 12th at 2pm Eastern.

EvDem LogoEvDem has been honing its dialogue-to-change model for years in a huge variety of communities and has developed a wide ranging suite of tools to support the communities they work with, and this webinar is a great opportunity to get an overview of what resources they have to offer and how you can engage with their great work.

Here’s how the folks at EvDem describe the webinar:

Are you new to Everyday Democracy? Do you want to hear about success stories of communities that have used dialogue to create positive change? Join us for a webinar on Thursday, February 12 at 2pm ET for an orientation of our approach to change…

During this webinar, we will explore Everyday Democracy’s approach to change through dialogue and action. We will give an overview to how the process works, what kinds of results we’ve seen from using our approach, and  share a few stories of some of the communities we have worked with.

Not familiar with Everyday Democracy’s work? Here’s a bit of how they describe what they do:

We help communities build their own capacity for inclusive dialogue and positive change. Our ultimate aim is to create a national civic infrastructure that supports and values everyone’s voice and participation.

Because structural racism and other structural inequities affect communities everywhere, we help community groups use an “equity lens” in every phase of dialogue and change – coalition building, messaging, recruitment, issue framing, facilitation, and linking the results of their dialogues to action and change. We provide advice, training and flexible how-to resources on a wide range of issues – including poverty, racial equity, education, building strong neighborhoods, community-police relations, violence, early childhood, and community planning.

This webinar will be a great chance to learn about the work and resources of one of the leading D&D organizations in the field, so we hope you will consider attending. You can learn more about the webinar on EvDem’s website by clicking here, and you can register for it by visiting https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5362336164849502721.

We hope to “see” you online next Thursday!

 

Apply to the Summer Institute of Civic Studies by Mar. 15

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We encourage NCDD members to apply to be part of the 7th annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies this June 15-25, and also to consider attending the 2015 Frontiers of Democracy conference this June 24-25. Both events have institutions in the field that are stewarded by NCDD supporting members Drs. Peter Levine and Nancy Thomas of Tufts University.

I myself am a Summer Institute alumni and have attended multiple Frontiers conferences, and they are both great opportunities to learn and work with many of the nation’s leaders of civic innovation. Find out more below about both  in the announcement below or by clicking here.

Tufts-logo

The 7th Annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies

The seventh annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies will be an intensive, two-week, interdisciplinary seminar bringing together faculty, advanced graduate students, and practitioners from many countries and diverse fields of study.

Organized by Peter Levine of Tufts University’s Tisch College and Karol Sołtan of the University of Maryland, the Summer Institute will engage participants in challenging discussions of such topics as:

  • What kinds of citizens (if any) do good regimes need?
  • What should such citizens know, believe, and do?
  • What practices and institutional structures promote the right kinds of citizenship?
  • What ought to be the relationships among empirical evidence, ethics, and strategy?

The syllabus for the sixth annual seminar (in 2014) is here: Continue reading →

City of Cambridge Adopts PB, Partners with PBP

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We could hardly be more excited to share that yet another city has adopted participatory budgeting and will be partnering with our friends at the Participatory Budgeting Project, an NCDD organizational member. We learned about this great new development from the Challenges to Democracy blog, which is run by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance & Innovation, another NCDD organizational member, and we encourage you to read more about the news below or to find the original article here.

Ash logoIn June, Mayor of Boston Marty Walsh announced the successful allocation of $1 million dollars from Boston’s budget to fund seven capital projects, formulated and proposed by the city’s youth. Boston is one of several cities across the United States to have not only enthusiastically embraced participatory budgeting (PB), but have adapted the concept – for example by extending the opportunity to youth.

Boston has begun to facilitate greater civic engagement and empowerment among its young residents. Its experiment in civic activism is also generating momentum behind PB in another city in the Greater Boston area. The City of Cambridge recently announced that it would initiate its own PB process, in partnership with the nonprofit Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP).

Cambridge City Council member Leland Cheung first introduced PB to Cambridge over two years ago when he learned about its implementation in other cities, but its implementation has been fully embraced by Cambridge Mayor David Maher, City Council, and the City Manager. With the process formally underway, the City Budget Office will continue to handle all matters related to PB.

The city has made available half a million dollars in the FY16 capital budget for city projects.

Whereas Boston’s PB initiative targets residents age 12-25, Cambridge will open its PB process to all residents of Cambridge who are 12 years and older. Jeana Franconi, director of the city’s Budget Office, and her team has scoured the city’s library’s, senior centers, non-profits, schools and youth centers to solicit ideas for proposals. This ideas collection phase – which closed officially on December 31 – will help narrow down city priorities as reflected by resident concerns.

After residents submit ideas, “Budget Delegates” – volunteers at least 14 years old and whom are either a resident or affiliated with Cambridge in some way – will be tasked with transforming the project ideas into concrete proposals to be voted on in March.

Like the Boston PB process, the City of Cambridge envisions PB to be a tool for fostering civic engagement and community spirit. To that end, it has four goals it hopes to achieve through experimenting with PB.

Make Democracy Inclusive. As the Boston case demonstrated, PB brought together stakeholders (e.g., youth) who are not normally invited to participate in the decision making process and emphasized their role in strengthening civil society and enhancing civic engagement. Through expanding and diversifying participation in the decision-making process, the City’s budget is able to better reflect the priorities of stakeholders and preserve their engagement with the city over the long-term.

Have Meaningful Social and Community Impact. Residents are encouraged to submit ideas to the ideas map and other residents are able to “support this project” by clicking on the appropriate link. The city and budget delegates (see above) are able to then collect some data on which projects would generate “meaningful social and community impact.”

Promote Sustainable Public Good. Cambridge has outlined that all project considerations benefit the public, are implemented on public property, and can be completed with funds from one year’s PB process.

Create Easy and Seamless Civic Engagement. The city dedicated several meetings to establishing a steering committee that will lead the PB process (there are 22 current members), articulated themes of inclusion, and sustainable, meaningful impact, and launched its first PB Assembly to encourage community members to brainstorm ideas.

Like Boston’s Youth Lead the Change initiative, Cambridge’s PB project will complement other city programs that seek to encourage civic participation and engagement on the part of all city residents and those who are affiliated with the city. Franconi noted,

PB really ties in to many of the civic engagement efforts the city is involved in. [For example], the Community Development Department recently hosted Community Conversations in several neighborhoods to receive recommendations for the upcoming Citywide Plan.

With regards to young people in particular, Franconi spoke of the city’s Kids’ Council, through which participants travel to the annual National League of Cities conference to represent Cambridge and support youth participation on a national level. Youth involvement in the PB initiative, however, will provide opportunities for direct impact on the city’s most relevant needs.

Cambridge will begin its evaluation phase in April, but has already reflected on a few lessons as outlined by Richa Mishra’s piece on the promises and pitfalls of PB. In particular, Mishra’s emphasis on “process backed by results” should resonate with any local government attempting PB. The temptation to seek quick results over preserving the fidelity to process has, as she asserts, a deleterious effect on participation and ownership. Likewise, if process is emphasized at the expense of meaningful moves towards achieving results, participants could become disillusioned that their voices will not make a difference.

Franconi recognizes this inherent tension in the decision making process, and believes the city has still a lot to learn about the nature of PB. For one, Cambridge will initiate the next year’s PB process in the summer rather than the fall to fully capture citizen participation in every stage—from ideas collection to voting on the proposals—and to give residents more time to digest their responsibilities and sense of civic duty.

As the city designs its evaluation strategy, Hollie Russon Gilman, PhD, an expert on U.S.-based PB initiatives, further recommends that “civic experiments and civic innovations like PB need room to grow, evolve, and engage people. At times privileging initial indicators, over social impact, has the potential to stifle early process creativity.”

In the meantime, the city has achieved some incremental wins. It has opened up multiple avenues for participation (i.e., steering committees, online map tool, volunteering as a budget delegate or facilitator). Additionally, “a strong online and social media presence has helped tremendously,” Franconi asserts. “It has allowed us to do more outreach and canvassing to our underserved populations.”

As of this writing, Cambridge is on target with its proposed timeline. Over 380 ideas have been submitted to the online ideas map. To move forward with the formulation of concrete proposals, Cambridge hosted a Budget Delegate training on January 6 and will host a Volunteer Facilitator Training on January 10. For more information on how to get involved, please click here.

You can find the original version of the is piece on the Challenges to Democracy blog at www.challengestodemocracy.us/home/cambridge-is-next-u-s-city-looking-to-foster-engagement-with-participatory-budgeting/#more-1413.

NCDD Director to Speak at Personal Democracy Forum 2015

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We want NCDD members to know about Personal Democracy Forum 2015, a cutting-edge event being hosted by Personal Democracy Media this June 4-5 in NYC. PDF will bring together a diverse group of changemakers, and we’re excited to say it will feature NCDD’s director Sandy Heierbacher as one of the featured speakers. Early bird registration is as low as $350, but it ends Jan. 30th, so register ASAP!

Learn more in the announcement below or by visiting www.personaldemocracy.com/conference.

Personal Democracy Forum is the definitive event in the world of technology and politics. PDF brings together a thousand top opinion makers, political practitioners, technologists, and journalists from across the ideological spectrum for two days to network, exchange ideas, and explore how technology and wired citizens are changing politics, governance, and civil society.

We’ve already confirmed these amazing speakers, global leaders and innovators at the cutting edge of technology, politics and social change:

  • Sunil Abraham – Executive director, Center for Internet & Society, Bangalore
  • Cory Doctorow – Author and blogger, BoingBoing
  • Harold Feld – Senior vice president, Public Knowledge
  • Tristan Harris – Design ethics and product philosopher, Google
  • Nanjira Sambuli – Research manager, iHub Nairobi
  • Sandy Heierbacher – Executive director, National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation
  • Astra Taylor – Author, “The People’s Platform”
  • Zephyr Teachout – Professor, Fordham Law School

If past years are any indication, we’ll have a full house, because there’s no other event that gathers the transpartisan community of change­makers and doers that comes to PDF. And our “early ­bird” rate is our absolute best price­­, so act now and save!